Welcome to the lecture on linguistic diversity in Finland (in EN) by Dr. Sirkku Latomaa, University of Tampere, Finland, on Tuesday the 28th of February at 15.00–16.30 (including discussion), Room 314. You can find the abstract below:
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THE PAST AND PRESENT OF LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN FINLAND
Migration has always been a part of human history. Finns have moved around the world, and people from all over the world have moved to Finland. Until very recently, however, Finland has been regarded as an especially homogeneous and monolingual part of the world. Is there some basis for this myth, or should it be buried as inaccurate? In my lecture, I will look at linguistic diversity in Finland over time, examining both established and more recent language minorities (including Lithuanians in Finland). I will also discuss the linguistic rights of minorities, and the current citizens' initiative the purpose of which is to improve the visibility of multilingualism in demographic statistics.